TWD: Applesauce Spice Bars

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Karen of Something Sweet by Karen. I was really excited when I saw that this recipe had finally been selected because the picture in the book looks so delicious! So in actuality these are delicious but not spectacular. I think that I was partially a bit disappointed because they are really more of a thin cake than a bar. Basically, this is an apple cake with applesauce in the batter and bits of apple, raisins, and pecans scattered throughout- the flavor is quite delicious and very autumnal and it makes a good breakfast too! I'm trying to convince myself that I have eaten almost half of it by myself in order to keep my milk supply up for this plump little gal:

I think I will heed the advice of some other TWD bakers and make this in an 8x8 pan instead of a 9x13 next time so that I can get a more substantial "cake". The cake is topped with a tasty brown sugar glaze that sort of sinks into the cake and I think that doing the cake in an 8x8 would also allow for a little thicker layer of glaze. All in all this was a good and very easy recipe that has me looking forward to the Fall and some cool weather!

TWD: Brownie Buttons

Whoa these brownies were so fabulous! Remember how I said that last week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Banana Bundt Cake wasn't much of a temptation for me? Well, this week was the total opposite! I could not stop eating these! It certainly doesn't help that the brownies are made in mini-muffin tins and therefore require no cutting... too easy to grab and pop into your mouth! This week's recipe was chosen by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen and I cannot thank her enough for this pick because I honestly thought these would be dry and boring brownies. The picture in Baking From My Home to Yours is really cute but I just assumed that the mini muffin tin would turn out little hard brownie rocks. Instead they ended up being extremely fudgy and intensely flavorful. The recipe calls for orange zest rubbed into a teaspoon of sugar to be added to the batter-now some of the TWD bakers found the orange flavor to be very subtle- but mine was very strong! Wow! I love chocolate and orange together but I've never had orange flavored brownies. The recipe calls for dipping the tops of the brownies in white chocolate but I didn't get around to doing it for this batch but I'm making a quadruple batch for my brother's graduation party this weekend so I'm going to try it with the chocolate this time around.

TWD: Banana Bundt Cake

I love cake pans so much. It is really hard for me not to buy non-functional or at least slightly functional yet extremely cute baking pans. So you have no idea how lovely it was for me to receive a variety specialty bakeware as wedding presents. One of the nicest pans I got was the NordicWare Fleur de Lis Bundt Pan and I'm embarrassed to say that here I am, more than two years after my wedding and this is the first week that I've whipped the sucker out! But once I saw how beautifully my cake popped out of this wonderful pan I quickly baked up another bundt too- now I think I have the bundt-bug because I'm dying to make another one!

Anyway, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for a Classic Banana Bundt Cake was chosen by Mary of The Food Librarian. This cake was pleasantly easy to put together (a must for me now with two babies under the age of two) and it smelled wonderful as it baked. I am not a huge banana bread fan so I didn't love this cake but I will say that it had a great moist, tight crumb and everyone who tasted it really liked it. I think one of the great parts of this cake is that the bananas were really the star of the show- there are no spices or fancy additions- it is just an old fashioned, basic recipe. This will definitely be my go to banana cake/bread recipe from now on!